How to Ask Questions in Private Beta

The tone and quality of the questions asked during this temporary private beta are critically important.

If the private beta doesn't produce enough high quality expert level questions, it won’t proceed onward to the public beta. To help ensure your site makes it out of private beta, here are some tips:

Avoid “easy” questions

It’s tempting to start with easy, superficial questions: surveys, polls, and rudimentary questions like “what are some good books on this topic” or “what are the best blogs on this topic”. Those are not good questions for the private beta – they don’t reflect the actual content that we want this site to contain, and are not representative of it.

Think like an expert

Stick to actual, real, objective questions with concrete answers that a working professional or expert in this field might encounter as a part of their actual, real, job. Stock the site with a bunch of on-topic, expert questions and answers, so that when the site opens to the public, it’s already pre-populated with a bunch of the kind of content that will attract other experts.

You get the site you build

The first questions set the tone and topic of a site for a long time. Those early questions say a lot about what your community could become. And questions asked during the private beta will be on the front page when potential experts see your site for the first time. So please make those first questions exemplary ones that are interesting, challenging, and worthy of imitation.